speech for the Crown, but the report of the
trial does not bear that the document itself was produced, or that
it was proved to be in Cranstoun's handwriting. The letter is quoted
in the _Secret History_ and referred to in other contemporary
tracts, and the fact of its existence appears to have been well
known at the time. Further, Miss Blandy in her _Own Account_
distinctly alludes to its receipt, and no objection was taken by her
or her counsel to the reading of it at the trial. The point is of
importance for two reasons. Firstly, this letter, if written by
Cranstoun and received by Mary affords the strongest presumptive
proof of their mutual guilt. Had their design been, as she asserted,
innocent, what need to adopt in a private letter this "allegorical"
and guarded language? Secondly, Mary, as we shall see, found means
before her arrest to destroy the half of the Cranstoun correspondence
in her keeping, and it would have been more satisfactory if the
prosecution had shown how this particular letter escaped to fall into
their hands. That she herself fabricated it in order to inculpate her
accomplice is highly improbable; had she done so, as Mr. Bleackley has
pointed out, its contents would have been more consistent with her
defence.

On the evening of Sunday, 4th August, Susan Gunnell, by order of her
mistress, made in a pan a quantity of water gruel for her master's
use. On Monday, the 5th, Miss Blandy was seen by the maids at
mid-day stirring the gruel with a spoon in the pantry. She remarked
that she had been eating the oatmeal from the bottom of the pan,
"and taking some up in the spoon, put it between her fingers and
rubbed it." That night some of the gruel was sent up in a half-pint
mug by Mary for her father's supper. When doing so, she repeated her
curious action of the morning, taking a little in a spoon and
rubbing it. On Tuesday, the 6th, the whole house was in confusion:
Mr. Blandy had become seriously ill in the night, with symptoms of
violent pain, vomiting, and purging. Mr. Norton, the Henley
apothecary who attended the family, was summoned--at whose instance
does not appear--and on arriving at the house he found the patient
suffering, as he thought, from "a fit of colic." He asked him if he
had eaten anything that could have disagreed with him; and Mary, who
was in the bedroom, replied "that her papa had had nothing that she
knew of, except some peas on the Saturday night before." Not a word
was sa